10/20/2023-Time Management

The best way to feel good about where you spend your time is to have something to show for it. Get into the habit of setting goals, and then you can tie your time spent to those initiatives.

Go ahead and daydream about an empty To Do list, but the fact is, you enjoy work.

However…you don’t enjoy being frantic, stressed, pushed, and constantly under the gun. (Who does?)

One solution: anticipate better.

Spending a few minutes every night previewing your upcoming meetings and deadlines will help you organize and focus on essential tasks. You know the types of action items that will be generated from your pitch meetings, so it makes sense to try and forecast your workload a bit.

Time management is about organization and discipline, and anticipating your time is key to becoming more productive.

When the dust settles tonight, preview the next few days of your calendar and create a list of prep tasks. Include in the list all the items you anticipate from those meetings and events. It doesn’t matter if your crystal ball isn’t perfect, anticipating and planning the work generated from your meetings will help you budget and prioritize your time.

That nightly rolling list is your "Must Do" of essential tasks to focus your actions the next day. Once that list is made, you might stop doing things that don’t matter.

Sure, handle your fire drill items tomorrow, but ignore everything else not on your "Must Do" list.

If there were a magic elixir that could make you more productive, by now, you’d have watched the 45-minute YT infomercial and clicked.

But it doesn’t exist. There are no easy solutions to time management.

Sometimes, you’re fired up about being more productive, other times, you are happy at the pace you’re going. That’s fine. Self-created guilt or shame about time management is not good nor encouraged by MySalesDay.

At the same time, it’s smart to constantly talk about TM and promote ideas and approaches that help your productivity.

The only way to feel good about where you spend your time is to have something to show for it. The backbone of this principle is based on the core elements of strong time management skills:
1. Understand where you spend your time.
2. Build a disciplined scheduling system.
3. Set and manage goals.

There’s nothing more tangible for a salesperson than goals. But where most sellers get confused about setting goals – and thus, dismayed about time – is thinking all goals must be hairy and audacious.

They don’t.

Goals can be small, too, but they must be meaningful.

If you’re not a good time manager, that’s okay, you can keep working at it and find approaches that help. And if you’re exhausted by the Time Is Sacred topic, that’s okay too. Do the best you can. After all, you don’t punch a clock, right?

MySalesDay regularly covers TM for obvious reasons…productivity matters A LOT in sales.

But after you watch this 12-minute Ted Talk featuring time management philosopher Brad Aeon, you might just mutter…

Time management…shmanagement.

And that would be fine.

There are tons of experts out there exhorting you with tips to manage time better, yet maybe today you say, "…screw it!"

Although MySalesDay encourages approaches like creating a "Must Do" list, relax knowing that every second does not have to be managed tightly.

Let Brad’s message can help you breathe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXBA4eWskrc